Page 128 of Twisting Beauty

She didn’t answer. She crossed the room, her footsteps soft and measured, as if I were a wild animal that she was approaching.

Get out. You can’t see me like this.

“Did you enjoy the show?” I made my voice as ugly as it would go, hiding the growing panic underneath. “Watching from your nice safe vent. Have you come to gloat?”

She crouched down beside me on the floor, close enough that I could feel the warmth of her.

My insides twisted and my grip on myself faltered. I needed her gone, but God help me, I wanted her near.

“I should have let him have you,” I spat, even as I hated myself for the words coming out of my mouth. “He and I could have compared notes.”

She didn’t even flinch. She absorbed my hateful words, and her features softened.

She stood and walked away.

For one second I thought I’d won. Disappointment slammed through me hard enough to hurt. I hated her and hated myself in the same breath.

But the door didn’t open. Her footsteps had gone the other way. Toward my adjoining bathroom.

I heard a drawer open. Then another. And the shuffle of her rummaging through.

She came back with my first aid kit in her hands. Scissors. The brown bottle of antiseptic. A folded square of clean cloth.

“Get out,” I tried. “I don’t want you here.”

“Hold still.” She crouched again, behind me this time, and lifted the hem of my shirt away from the worst of it and started cutting, separating cotton from the broken skin underneath.

I went still.

She pulled the splinters out one at a time, moving slowly and carefully across my back. God, her hands were so soft. Too soft. Too gentle. No one had ever handled my pain as if it mattered.

“He’ll punish you for this.” My voice came out flat. “If he finds out you kept me weak.”

She just kept working.

I glanced at the door, waiting for the sound of his footsteps in the corridor. The handle turning. His silhouette in the frame.

The door stayed shut. She kept working, focusing only on my back. She didn’t even look up once to check the door.

“This might sting a little.” She pressed the antiseptic-soaked cloth to my back.

I flinched at the bite, a hiss escaping me before I could stop it.

She paused. Just long enough to let me find my breath. Then she went back to it.

She would not pity me. She also would not let me pretend it didn’t hurt.

She didn’t talk. She seemed to sense that silence was the only way this was survivable for me.

Just her hands on my back. Careful. Steady. Doing what needed doing.

I don’t know how long it took. Long enough for my hands to ache from how hard I was holding the shattered violin. Long enough for the blood on the floor between my knees to start drying at the edges. Long enough for my shoulders, against my will, to drop.

When she was done bandaging me, she sat on the floor beside me.

I felt her gaze on me, but it didn’t burn the way judgment did.

She had seen me broken and I kept waiting for her to use it against me. But she didn’t. Why didn’t she?